cafetiere for the painfully aware

[devi]

There's gonna be a hangin' today.

Sarah of the Fringe is going to be here shortly to drive me and a bunch of paintings down to the Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building, one of the exhibition venues. I should probably not have stayed up late last night randomly drinking vodka and sending emails and then standing out on the balcony listening to the city in the still night. I feel a bit woolly now, but it was very nice. On the phone Sarah pointed out that the directions I was giving to my house all used pubs as landmarks. It's a fair cop.

But something I've been wondering about for a long time: why do most people seem to give directions of the "third left, then fourth right, then two more lefts, then take a right and five more lefts and you're there" variety rather than using street names, pub names or whatever? The latter method is clearly superior! In the first method all the instructions are dependent on your having got all the previous ones right, and if you make one mistake you're lost. Whereas in the second method, if you come to a confusing junction you can at least tell that you've definitely got the route right up to that point because, well, there's the Original Swan. Which is much less confusing than trying to work out if something counts as one of the twenty-seven "lefts" or not.

And do other people find it easy to hold a long sequence of turnings in their heads and be sure they've remembered it accurately? I know I don't. Those same people often say "But I don't remember street names" when I ask for any landmarks on the route. But street names are much more memorable! I am confused.

Comments

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I use pubs as landmarks. Except when describing where I work, when I occasionally use university buildings, but I'll use pubs if the person I'm talking to is more likely to know where the White Horse is than the Sheldonian!

[eleanorb.livejournal.com]

I find it much easier to remember right, third left, right again, than down Fred Street, left at the Blue Boar, or is it the Red Lion. I can never remember small street names even in places I've lived years. Mind you, as a pedestrian I do often forget one way streets and routes too narrow for cars when I'm directing people :-)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

No, I'm with you on this.

My directions tend to go along the lines of, 'Take the third exit off the second roundabout and go straight for a bit - there'll be a big park on your left - and turn right just before the speed camera'.

I have no objections to people giving me a string of lefts and rights and numbers, but everyone needs some form of error checking.

I tend not to use street names, but that's mostly because I don't know them. In any case, a lot of street signs are easy to miss.

Pubs, on the other hand...

[xnamkrad.livejournal.com]

You know they once had a contest in Dublin to travel the city from North to South without passing any pubs. They had to change it to be passing as few pubs as possible.

[jinty]

I got quite fed up with the instructions to the remote MCR farmhouse that year that you, me, Dan, and Damian went - you probably remember that they were in the form 'turn left after the second cattle grid' which not only was subject to the kind of error that you mention, but also doesn't work well if you end up coming from the other direction, as we did! Not that there were very many pubs or road signs to use as reference in that case, mind you...

(I'm with you in the direction style - if someone did try to give me a bunch of left- and right- instructions I'd end up asking for a postcode & looking it up on Google maps or my GPS or something.)

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Apparently there's a distinct gender bias to whether you think in point-to-point/coordinates terms (ie unique landmarks) or directional/vectors (ie numbered lefts/rights). I don't know how true that is, but certainly Different People Visualise Differently.

Whether it's because I'm aware of this bit of useless knowledge, or because I merrily confuse any gender test by being both emotive & spacially aware and therefore breaking their stereotypes, I tend to give directions that list both, eg "Take the first left after the roundabout, ie just by the Angersteirre Hotel"

Mind you, my directions also include stuff like "The buses always take this corner too fast, be careful crossing", so I think I just have an overpopulated mindmap...

But yes, mapping by pubs for the win :)

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

gender divisions are rarely useful and lead to frustrating generalisations, having said that, this has been interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/menreadmaps/

I have to write down anything that gets too complicated, but yes, I like to be trusted with names & places, as that way I can find it myself, or heaven forfend, stop & ask directions...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

gender divisions are rarely useful and lead to frustrating generalisations

As wimble once pointed out, women are very fond of making gender-based generalizations.

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

actually some of the worst generalisations I've seen recently have been made by ardent feminists who are the first to pounce normally.

Not that ALL femists do this, of course. ;-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I also specify directions via multiple means, although I think in my case it's anxiety over potentially losing people that makes me throw in as many hooks as I can.

Pubs make great landmarks because they're (generally) designed to be easy to spot from the road, and generally there isn't another one of a similar name anywhere nearby. A lot easier than street names, which are often missing / concealed / only visible after you've driven past.

[mrs-leroy-brown.livejournal.com]

Dude, you are Wholly Correct in your directions-giving sense. I always panic when people use words like 'left' or 'south'. Just tell me what pub or shop is on the corner, etc. That makes all the sense!

[jinty]

'South' can be a good way of giving directions, in the right situation. In grid-based Manhattan it's a nice unambiguous instruction that users can readily understand (very easy to tell north and south just by looking up in most cases). I wish my GPS could tell me to go north or south sometimes, especially where there's big roadsigns saying 'the North'!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I don't like either of those methods of giving directions.

The left,left,right,second-left method suffers from zero error tolerance, which is bad.

But the landmark-based one suffers from the fact that landmarks can be missed at which point there's no failure check at all. "Keep going along the A328 until you get to the Black Dog" can send you halfway across London if you miss the landmark.

I prefer giving directions as a mixture of both combined with error checks ("if you see a big Tesco on your left you've gone too far"). Also, always give someone the simplest route in preference to the shortest. And when giving local directions, encourage the traveller to reacquire directions later ("go down this road to the traffic lights, turn left, walk as far as the park and then ask someone for directions from there").

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I tend to give object-based direction, partly because a combination of cycling, pedestrianing and sticking to my well-known node-to-node routes means that I often couldn't tell you how many left there are off a street before the one you want.

(I'd just like to praise the excellent title, really)

[snowballjane.livejournal.com]

I have terrible left-right confusion (to the extent of sometimes having to mime the action of writing to work out which of my hands is the right) so descriptive directions are always very helpful for me.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

*grins*

Oh, I can totally sympathise with that! (I have good spatial awareness, it's just that the associated *words* get muddled)

Amusingly, my father and I muddle in exactly the same way - but he gives out enough non-verbal cues that I know when he means 'the other left'. Very confusing for my mother if I was driving, my father was navigating, and she was trying not to get car sick in the back when anticipating the directions my father was vocalising...

[snowballjane.livejournal.com]

Yes, for some reason the words just won't stick to the direction in my head at all.

When driving or directing a driver, I usually use "snowballjane side", "[Mr Snowball] side".

[timscience.livejournal.com]

I remember some stuff on this in New Scientist...it has to do with whether you're a visual or aural person as far as your memory works, apparently. Visual stuff is great for map reading and pub based directions, aural better for turn-left-turn right type directions. It is slightly gender linked (men tilting towards visual) but not nearly enough to generalise based on gender.

I remember reading something similar in one of Feynman's anecdote books (this one I think)- some people when they think about maths "hear" it and can do visually based tasks while doing mental arithmetic, but can't do it when listening to music. Others "see" numbers (Feynman described seeing them as figures on a ticker tape) so can carry on conversations and such while keeping track but if you put the TV on will be lost.

Oddly, as a musician, I am very strongly visual. Give me a street name and I can find a route on a map with ease, and once driven I will remember it even months later, but give me a set of "turn left here, turn right there", even with added pubs, and I will be lost within minutes even quite close to home. But I don't "see" numbers in my head if I have to do maths, instead I "hear" them.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Street names would be my preference - but they rely on street signs, which every council outside Westminster and the City of London seems to regard as a frivolous luxury.

I use compass points for navigating round Oxford, but only because I've spent too long staring at street maps. I don't think many people would appreciate being told to go east then north, except orienteers.

[thecesspit.livejournal.com]

Navigation by pubs doesn't work here in Sunny BC... not enough pubs. And navigating by coffee shops doesn't work when you have to describe -which- Starbucks you mean (the one with the awning... not the one in the parade of shops with the white frontage). Yes, there are Starbucks opposite Starbucks.

Obviously, the grid system helps, but Victoria is old enough and British enough to not be completely a grid, and have a lot of dead ends, one ways, corners and the like to catch you out.

On the other hand, every street is named at every corner with a big sign. Vancouver is easy 'head down Main to the 5600 block where it joins Arbutus at the Mall, turn right down Arbutus, and then turn left after two blocks down Ontario, opposite the Canadian Tire'.

[therealjo.livejournal.com]

I think your way is by far superior. I too, use pubs as landmarks, or other frequently used and memorable public buildings that happen to be en route. It's just that they're mostly pubs.

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this one- I like names and landmarks because they are so much easier to remember/verify. Also, I can't remember sequences of directions beyond about two terms. I tend to learn the routes to places visually, rather than having a sense of how they work spatially. So I much prefer directions that I can visualise.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

The simple solution to this dilemma is to only ever direct people to pubs.